Today I shall give you some pointers for using GPIO as inputs. As with outputs you can configure them with the schematic file or by writing firmware. Here is an instance of the GPIO_PDL component in a schematic.

I configured the component to be called "SW2" because I am going to map it to the pin that connects to that switch on the Pioneer kit. In the customizer I also disabled the hardware connection, so I can use it exclusively in firmware, and set the drive mode to be resistive pull up. This means that the pin reads high when the switch is not pressed and goes low when it is pressed (active-low) and grounds the pin.

In the resources file I chose pin P0.4 and you can see that reflected inside the schematic pin symbol (above).

When I build this, PSoC Creator does the magic and I can start reading the pin in main() with no initialization code. I kept the LED9 component from the last week's article and this code makes it follow the state of the switch.

    for(;;)
    {
        Cy_GPIO_Write( LED9_PORT, LED9_NUM, Cy_GPIO_Read( SW2_PORT, SW2_NUM ) ); 
    }

OK, that was easy. How do I do it using just PDL firmware? Well, it just takes one extra line of code. Now, I do not have another switch on the kit so I chose to use a jumper wire as a really, really, really naughty alternative - connecting P0.2 in header J4 to ground manually. Note how I initialize the pin and changed the code in the loop to use my new "switch".

    Cy_GPIO_Pin_FastInit( GPIO_PRT0, 2, CY_GPIO_DM_PULLUP, 1, HSIOM_SEL_GPIO );

    for(;;)
    {
        Cy_GPIO_Write( LED9_PORT, LED9_NUM, Cy_GPIO_Read( GPIO_PRT0, 2 ) ); 
    }

So this works great but it contains those scary "magic numbers" that will bite me if I try to do this is a real (bigger) application. Let me fix that right away, before I get a call from the Cypress code quality police.

#define SW_PORT     GPIO_PRT0
#define SW_NUM      2

    Cy_GPIO_Pin_FastInit( SW_PORT, SW_NUM, CY_GPIO_DM_PULLUP, 1, HSIOM_SEL_GPIO );

    for(;;)
    {
        Cy_GPIO_Write( LED9_PORT, LED9_NUM, Cy_GPIO_Read( SW_PORT, SW_NUM ) ); 
    }

I may only have only one real switch (I called my jumper wire "SW") but I do have another LED. It's LED8 on P1.5. Here is a program that drives LED9 from SW2 and LED8 from SW (naughty switch) to further contrast the approaches.

#define SW_PORT     GPIO_PRT0
#define SW_NUM      2

#define LED8_PORT   GPIO_PRT1  
#define LED8_NUM    5

    Cy_GPIO_Pin_FastInit( SW_PORT, SW_NUM, CY_GPIO_DM_PULLUP, 1, HSIOM_SEL_GPIO );
    Cy_GPIO_Pin_FastInit( LED8_PORT, LED8_NUM, CY_GPIO_DM_STRONG, 1, HSIOM_SEL_GPIO );

    for(;;)
    {
        Cy_GPIO_Write( LED9_PORT, LED9_NUM, Cy_GPIO_Read( SW2_PORT, SW2_NUM ) ); 
        Cy_GPIO_Write( LED8_PORT, LED8_NUM, Cy_GPIO_Read( SW_PORT, SW_NUM ) );
    }

So, which of these methods should you use? Well, it's 100% up to you because neither is really better than the other. If you use a component in a schematic then PSoC Creator will stop you from inadvertently using that pin for some other function. That's quite nice but most of the time that just does not happen because P0.4 is connected to SW2 and there is no reason to try to use it for anything else. With the firmware-only approach you need to remember to initialize the pin but it is much fast to make a change to another pin and re-build.

Next time I shall beef this up a little by making the program interrupt-driven and I'll explain how to manage multiple interrupts from one GPIO port.